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On family reunification deadline, some parents remain at Aurora ICE facility while others embrace kids for first time in months

Posted By smay || 26-Jul-2018

Immigration attorneys are focusing on reunified family’s asylum case

Thursday marked the deadline parents separated from their children at the border were ordered to be reunited by a federal judge, but some parents still sat inside an Aurora ICE detention center while others wrapped their kids in their arms for the first time in months, immigration attorneys said.

Provided by The Federal Practice Group

A mother who was separated from her son at the U.S.- Mexico border and detained in an Aurora ICE detention center is reunited with her son at Dulles Airport near Washington D.C.

“I don’t get the sense that the people who are in Aurora will be reunited today, so most likely the administration will violate that court order and miss the deadline here in Colorado,” said Nathan Woodliff-Stanley, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado.

Local and national ICE representatives did not return a request for comment about the number of immigrants remaining in the Aurora facility who are separated from their children .

Woodliff-Stanley said any consequences of the administration missing Thursday’s reunification deadline will be left to the courts to decide.

“I don’t know that there is a plan,” Woodliff-Stanley said. “The root problem with all of this is when the administration started separating families, they did it without putting in place a way to track people or any way to put them together. So they had to scramble to figure out systems under the court order.”

Colorado U.S. Senator Michael Bennet issued a statement Thursday in which he pledged to continue to work with colleagues from both parties and the community to put pressure on the administration until every family is reunited.

“Tonight, the administration is rushing to meet a court-ordered deadline to reunite the more than 2,500 migrant children it separated from their parents,” Bennet wrote in a statement. “We expect the administration to claim it has met this deadline, even though hundreds of children will remain separated because they are ‘ineligible’ for reunification. That is unacceptable. It is not who we are as a nation.”

Lockwood said she is confident she’ll be able to see her clients through the reunification process.

The immigration attorney is relieved she’s already been able to hug clients released from ICE and watch them go on to meet up with their children. Lockwood has been traveling across the country meeting her clients and relying on volunteers like Denver’s Sarah Jackson with immigration advocacy organization Casa de Paz, who traveled to the ICE facility in Texas where Aurora detainees were sent on Friday.

Attorneys like Lockwood haven’t been notified of their clients’ release. The only way Lockwood has found out about her clients’ release or reunification is when they call her.

The calls are seared into Lockwood’s memory.

“I can hear their voice quivering,” Lockwood said. “That’s what gets me. I can hear the children in the background. You can hear the kids right up against the mom. They’re not letting them go.”

Some clients have been sending Lockwood photos of the moment they swept their children into their arms again.

“I smile the moment I see them,” Lockwood said. “It’s no longer Mom in blue detention center scrubs. Her hair is done. It’s a mother’s arms around her son. It makes me choke up just thinking about it. The woman in that photo is not the woman I met in the ICE detention center. It’s two different people. It’s kind of nice to meet her for the first time in that photo.”

After the hugs and joyful reunifications, Lockwood said there are difficult roads ahead.

Lockwood is starting the process of asylum cases with her clients.

“The biggest thing that we’re trying to prove — depending on each woman who has different types of cases like domestic violence, fleeing death threats from criminal organizations and such — is that their government is unable or unwilling to protect them,” Lockwood said.

Asylum cases, which Woodliff-Stanley said are legal and not the same as people entering the country illegally, can take anywhere from three to five years. Lockwood is getting initial hearings set in 2019 or 2020, but the timeframe is overshadowed for the moment by pictures of moms and kids together again.

“It’s absolutely amazing to see that and know that I helped get her there,” Lockwood said. “It makes all these long flights, sleepless nights and tears of frustration worth it.”

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Is fire hot or cold?

“The information on this website is for general information purposes only. Nothing on this site should be taken as legal advice for any individual case or situation. This information is not intended to create, and receipt or viewing does not constitute, an attorney-client relationship.Sending a message using this form does not create an attorney-client relationship between you and The Federal Practice Group. Please do not use this form to send us confidential information.”